Tilly Norwood's creator insists the AI actor is creating Hollywood jobs

Comedic actor and producer Eline Van der Velden, better known as the creator of the AI-generated "actor" Tilly Norwood, insists the robot-actor is a job creator, not the job killer critics fear she will be.

Norwood, who was introduced to the world in July 2025, is back in the spotlight as she — or it — is poised to make her big-screen debut in "Misaligned," a feature film from Particle6, Van der Velden's production company.

Rather than destroying jobs, Norwood has allowed her to hire more staff, Van der Velden told CBS News. Since she leaned into AI, her studio has expanded her small team sixfold by hiring actors, creative producers and writers, pushing her employee base to roughly 40 workers, she added.

"It's all a result of AI being available," Van der Velden said.

Van der Velden is keenly aware of the perils of AI and the threat it poses to workers' livelihoods, including her own. As an actor and producer, she was concerned that AI could quickly render some of her creative skills, including acting and video content creation, obsolete if she didn't learn how to leverage it.

"I was in the same boat as everyone else. I saw AI-generated images and videos and was like, wow, this is going to take my business," she said. "I was an actor running a small production company, and I knew I needed to future-proof my company and myself."

Van der Velden told CBS News that while she's received offers for Norwood to appear in traditional films, she has declined them because she "would never place Tilly in a role that's in a live-action film."

"The point of her is to raise awareness of what is possible, but she needs to stay in her AI box. That's why we are making an AI film with her," Van der Velden said.

Particle6 describes Norwood's first feature film, titled "Misaligned," as a "coming-of-age story infused with existential AI chaos" that is set in "a surreal digital world located somewhere up in the Cloud." Norwood will play an AI being with no lived experience of her own who gains access to humans' backstories. She will appear alongside other AI-generated actors, according to Van der Velden, who said the film is in production.

Norwood sparked an immediate backlash when she was introduced to the world in July 2025.

"To be clear, 'Tilly Norwood' is not an actor, it's a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation," Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) said in a statement in September 2025.

"It doesn't solve any